Tag Archives: web 3.0

In 2007, a reporter asked former Google CEO Eric Schmidt an “easy question:” What is Web 3.0?

After some grumbling about “marketing terms,” Schmidt obliged, saying that, to him, Web 3.0 is all about the simplification and democratization of software development, as people would begin to draw on the tools and data floating around in the Internet “cloud” to cobble together custom applications, which they would then share “virally” with friends and colleagues. -Rough Type, What is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 Vision
Already in motion, the no longer air-quoted Web 3.0 will be the Internet’s vast data semantically linked to generate a highly efficient, customized user experience. Even physical objects like food containers will have an online address. (We can see early iterations of hardlinking with QR codes right now.) In 2010, farmers began receiving data from cattle transmitting gigabytes of biological and geographical status updates. Your home will become more communicative, with electricity and water usage data sent to the cloud. TripIt will talk to my Brinks Home Security account when I’m on vacation. Don’t be afraid, this is progress. Knowledge is power. AI can be good. The semantic web facilitates machines to understand the meaning of information online.

You will be continuously logged in, not having to re-enter passwords. Sharing with a friend will pull the contextually relevant contacts from your list, aggregating your address book, social network, and suggested second-degree mutual friends. Today, user-generated content (UGC) not only constitutes an increasing amount of online data; it affects consumer behavior more than advertising does. In April 2011, “people who read customer ratings and reviews for Dell products [were] 138% more likely to make a purchase.” UGC will inform even more information and behavior. However, the format will change skins and become more concise.

We have largely unnetworked, unlinked data. It would be an historically accurate prediction to expect a micro crunch from the exploding conversational and social Web 2.0. But can you envision a trend reversal of the send-happy, prolific publishing of the average Facebook user’s 90 average pieces of monthly content? Google+ indicates a step toward Web 3.0 because it aggregates data and is cloud. Google Plus may seem similar to Facebook, but in key ways is a departure and progression.

We’re going to the cloud and bringing inanimate objects with us. Once there, micro personal status updates will be overshadowed by immense opportunity. On the current trajectory, I predict that this shift will seem like a big bang, but comprise small behavioral crunches. I.e., we will seem to share much more data, but it will be more 0’s and 1’s and less OMGs; more meaningful bytes overtaking 360 billion pieces of mostly banal user-generated content.

Over the last few years, hundreds of millions of ordinary people have become online content creators. The Internet used to be a one-way street of consumption (Web 1.0 when advertisers sold to users), but now it’s a conversation where even the most lay users publish and user-generated content (UGC) rules social and consumer activities.

Social media lends users networked, searchable content megaphones. User empowerment as publishers has become quotidian. Note the great reduction in censures berating the narcissism of content creation. People who still think Twitter is stupid or for alerting folks that you’re driving to work are considered ignorant and are becoming a minority (and that was in 2009).

Image courtesy of science.howstuffworks.com

But let’s not forget that (theoretically) since the beginning of “time,” the universe, earth, and this planet’s inhabitants from large to microscopic have existed and died in a series of bangs and crunches. Expansions and contractions. Even in human birth, the body contracts and expands to give life to the new.

Our shared egos and stories, our willingness to accept new fads and to dive head first into change can only hurtle with increasing velocity for so long. Eventually, the asteroid hits and kills the species, the glorious empire falls, the plague wipes out the population. The bang and crunch cycle is macro and it’s micro to the point of imperceptible, compounding tendencies away from the status quo.

The shift won’t be crunchy (instant and dramatic) but more of a slow crinkling, like an irksome moviegoer’s candy wrapper sliding between sticky fingers for the entire film.

In Part 2 of this article, I explore the shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IOT), a semantic linked data network where the Edy’s in my freezer, my Yelp review of a local frozen yogurt joint in Decatur, GA, my Kroger card shopping history, my upcoming Vermont country vacation near a dairy farm, and my recent viewing of an ice cream sandwich recipe on cookinglight.com synchronize. That is exciting.